Book Reviews

The ‘60s played host to three significant, culture shifting music festivals. The first was the Newport Folk Festival where, in the decade’s early years, folk, blues and country blended to produce a beautiful noise that the boomer generation eventually embraced.

Until the publication of this book this past fall, few people have seen this mind-boggling collection of black and white images shot by the late photographer Chuck Boyd in Los Angeles beginning in 1965. Though Boyd passed away in 1991 this set stops with a remarkable double page shot of B.B. King taken in 1978.

Larry Jaffee, Making Vinyl co-founder has written "Record Store Day" the authorized history of Record Store Day, better known as RSD. The book's subtitle is "The Most improbable Comeback of the 21st Century".

While others tossed, self-described music executive, historian, collector, archivist and memorabilia dealer Jeff Gold (an accurate though woefully incomplete description, by the way) was one of those prescient individuals who, as a young man, saw the intrinsic value in most everything physical related to the wondrous post World War II growth of music both as culture and as business.

Staffers stealing beer crates every night. £5000 in cash misplaced and incinerated by New Years’ Eve pyrotechnics. A lighting engineer stealing equipment for his own rental business. Seemingly endless tax problems.

Starting with their solicitor’s £5000 company registration fee (compared to the £175 DIY cost), Factory Records’ Manchester, England nightclub, the Haçienda, quickly became a financial black hole and later a cultural icon. Established between Factory and New Order at manager Rob Gretton’s insistence, it opened in 1982 at the corner of Whitworth Street West and Albion Street, in a former yacht warehouse. Assigned the Factory catalogue number FAC 51, it established an amalgamation of the era’s Manchester and New York’s clubs, always being too far ahead of its time. In The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club, former Joy Division/New Order bassist (and Haçienda co-owner) Peter Hook (aka Hooky) recounts the club’s inner workings, with Andrew Holmes providing additional context blurbs between Hook’s stories.

Your head will spin dizzily with pleasure before you reach the end of the first chapter of "Canyon of Dreams," Harvey Kubernik’s lovingly told history of the unique Hollywood micro-climate known as Laurel Canyon. The supernovas and the dimly lit alike open up to L.A. native, record biz insider and scene maker Kubernik who transmits their stories with an immediacy that will make you feel more like an eavesdropper than a history buff.